The Idumean’s lance went up with a flash in the sun, butt on ground, point in air, held by hand as of an unseeing statue. The hair of the man in the tent doorway curled unkempt and damp with night sweat on his brow. He was unshaven and bent, unlike soldier mien, as if crushed with burdens too heavy to be borne. He was still in the drowse of heavy sleep.
“Bernice—Princess—Sister,” he ejaculated. “Are you ghost—or flesh? In the name of all the gods of Rome, how came you—here?”
“Aye—how came her Highness here?” angrily repeated the old Idumean guard. “And my life was sworn to hold the two Princesses and the Queen Herodias safe in Machærus Fort beyond Jordan while the war lasts; but she tricked me by tale of joining some Nazarene Christians going to the Isles of Greece; and when the caravan passed this way up from the Jordan, she broke from rank and wheeled her horse affrighted by the morning trumpets straight for the General’s tent.”
“Silence—fellow,” ordered the man. “Who gave you leave to speak? Come inside, my Sister!”
He lifted the tent flaps, and they passed in. There was not a soul inside all the great tent but a Sabean slave laying out his master’s armor for the day.
“My Brother—my King—Agrippa—last of the Herod line,” the woman opened her arms; and they embraced with the passion of the Herod line, that loved as it hated, with the hot blood of the torrid Arab strain.
“You may go,” the King ordered the man.
Left alone, he turned to the Princess.
“What means this—mad—adventure, Sister?”
“It means, dear Brother, that the Herod women will no longer endure to be cooped like sheep to be eaten by wolves yonder in Machærus Fort! Herod women are of the lion line, my King! They fight not in cornered walls. They crouch and spring for the foe’s throat, and never wait for any foe to strike first.”